Two brothers are alive today because of the actions of Antonio Cooper, a professional truck driver with the Oklahoma City operating center of Greatwide Logistics Services. The Truckload Carriers Association has named Cooper as its latest Highway Angel.
At about 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 8, Cooper was driving westbound on Highway 152 in Oklahoma City after dropping a load in Tulsa. Suddenly, he saw the car in front of him weaving back and forth across the lanes and into and out of the median. This continued for about a half a mile. His first thought was that the driver either was drunk or falling asleep at the wheel. Pulling his truck alongside of the car, he honked, which woke up the sleeping passenger. The passenger grabbed the steering wheel and managed to bring the car to a stop in the median, just as it was poised to swerve into the path of eastbound traffic.
It turns out that the two men were brothers. The driver, 18, had been having a seizure and seemed incoherent. Cooper called 911 and used his finger to hold the young man’s tongue back so he wouldn’t choke. The second brother said they did not have a cell phone, so Cooper used his own phone to contact their mother. When paramedics arrived, he helped them restrain the young driver, who was still seizing.
“I’m just an ordinary citizen,” says Cooper. “If I can save a life, spare a life, that’s what I’m here for.” Cooper added that the incident seemed oddly familiar to him because while driving in Florida in 2006 – by sheer coincidence – he also had stopped to help a driver having a seizure.
